Of Knights and Threads
by Elisabeth Harker
Summary: In which David, Jack, and Sarah are very confused and prone to misjudging each other. Terrible results and heartbreak pending.


Disclaimer: Not mine!

Notes: Written in response to the newsiesprompts tumblr's week one challenge: A knight in shining armor.

"it's going to be a sunny day," Sarah commented. The window just above the coffee pot she presided over was still dark, but the sky was clear enough to show the few stars that had not yet evaporated into early morning dullness.

"Not day yet," David grumbled.

"Then why are we awake?" asked Sarah.

David, in typical four AM fashion, put his head in his hands as though that was the most effective way to protest any further utterance of _day_, or worse yet _morning_, for those were words that he hated earnestly whenever they had the audacity to dawn anew.

At least Sarah had Les as backup to poke, prod, climb, and _hopefully_ remind his older brother that there were worse things a person could do than cook him breakfast.

Most would think that Sarah did what she did out of love for her brothers, but she was self-aware enough to know that this wasn't true. The feeling that went into the eggs she was frying was jealousy, pure and simple. She wished that she could spend the day out selling papers with the two of them, or better yet leave David and Les home to make lace doilies while she embarked on a journey around the city, Jack Kelly at her side. She'd kissed him at the end of the strike, and it had been just the sort of bold turn to deserve another, if only everybody would stop watching her so carefully and let her go out and live her life in the way that she chose.

"Would you like to trade places?" Sarah asked wickedly, setting David's plate down on the table.

"Yes," he groaned, before sitting up as though the passing minutes were starting to give him some idea of what came out of his mouth. "I mean, no. I guess I wouldn't."

"I'm glad we can't," Les piped up, spearing the center of his eggs so that the yolk went everywhere. "You make Jack stupid. Not like a real cowboy at all."

David didn't answer, evidently finding his coffee more interesting than his little brother.

Sarah took her seat beside David, and started in on her own meal. In all truth she didn't need to be up as early as this, but she liked taking this small part in her brothers' day and pretending she'd get to experience the rest of it, childish though it was.

David had finished his drink before he remarked darkly, "Jack can be stupid all on his own. He doesn't need Sarah's help."

"You know what really stupid thing he's been doing lately?" Sarah asked.

David almost smiled at that, "Do you want a list, or would you rather not spend the day fearing for his life?"

"Exactly, that's the stupid thing he's doing, making me fear for his life. For all I know he's already dead and you've been hiding it from me. He never comes over any more."

"Oh." David put down his fork, clearly not too sure what to say. That was even more frustrating, and Sarah couldn't help but think that she should have brought this up in the evening when David was more useful. David took another sip of his coffee.

"Snipeshooter says they play poker back at the lodge at night, but David won't let me go, even though Pa said it was okay for me to watch as long as David tags along and I don't bet any money," said Les, who could usually get Sarah to join, at least in jest, in a good game of David-is-a-boring-stick-in-the-mud.

"Maybe I'll take you," Sarah offered, though she knew it could never happen.

Just to rub it in, Les rolled his eyes. "No girls. It's a rule."

"I'll make Jack come over tonight," David promised. "I think he just doesn't want us to feel like we have to feed him."

Les kicked David under the table, but David just kept on eating as if nothing had happened. Sarah squeezed his shoulder, and stood up to go back to the kitchen.

"I helped Mama bake muffins yesterday. We were going to save them for after dinner tonight, but there's an extra one you can take for lunch. Eat it in front of Jack, than lure him over with tales of how he won't get one."

David shook his head, but he put the muffin in his pocket anyway. He forgot to say goodbye to her in scolding Les to put on his coat before they left, but that was just how things went in the morning.

Sarah finished her own breakfast, took out her sewing, and for a few hours she was happy, thinking of how pleasant things would be with Jack later.

It was only later in the afternoon, when fancy and daydreams were starting to give in to honest contemplation in the most annoying of ways, that Sarah reflected on how everybody she cared about had been awfully strange towards her as of late. Mama and Papa stared at her and sometimes abruptly ceased conversation when she entered the room, Les acted as he'd just realized for the first time in his life that she was a _girl_ and this was a _bad_ thing, and David… well, David came the closest to being normal, but he'd been distant and lost in thought, sometimes bitter, and no longer prone to laughing and talking with her in the evenings as they always had before.

::::::::::::::::::

David and Les met Jack at the distribution center as they did every morning. They bought their papers, and David split the muffin between the three of them, since it would just get gross in his pocket anyway. Even so, Jack laughed and claimed that the muffin tasted like pocket lint and David's sweat, though whether or not that was to con Les out of his piece was anybody's guess.

After that they were off, calling out the day's headlines, or whatever exciting approximations of them Jack and Les could come up with.

Sarah had told David about two nights ago that she wished she could be a part of the conversations that he and Jack had during the day. David hadn't meant to hurt her feelings by laughing at her, but the fact was he and Jack didn't just spend their days just chatting like Sarah probably imagined they did. Sure, they sold together, and it was fun a lot of the time, but there wasn't a lot of conversation in that. It was all walking, separating here and there to cover larger areas, Jack showing up and stealing David's hat just when David started to wonder where he was, a chase, Les pretending to cough, maybe a joke or a remark if they encountered something new on their daily journey, but really what it was was a job.

Usually they'd keep selling without a break until they were too tired to walk anymore, or at least whenever Jack decided that they were too tired to walk anymore. David had learned that what often felt like "too tired" actually wasn't, considering he'd kept up work for hours past that point and not once collapsed.

It was almost nice, realizing that his feet and arms were sore, and he was covered with sweat from the sun beating overhead, but he could still go on if he wanted to. It made him feel invincible, something that his father said all boys his age thought they were, but that he'd never once felt back when he'd been spending his days inside a classroom.

They were selling somewhat faster than usual this day, due to some strangeness where Les going hoarse from a week of shouting out headlines, and rather than making it harder for him to sell his papers, like it should have, it was making it _easier_. He was tiny, he was speaking in a comical frog's croak, and hell if everybody didn't want to buy a pape off of him. The amount of change in David's pocket was modest compared to what Les had made, something that happened a lot more often than David wanted to admit.

"Well," Jack said at last in a tone as if everything had been neatly decided, "kid's dead on his feet, time for lunch."

With that Jack picked Les up and slung him over his shoulder, where Les grinned like he was anything other than dead, as they walked the short distance to Tibby's.

Snipeshooter and Boots were at the restaurant, but none of the older newsies, who would usually still be selling for another hour or so. Les rushed over to where they were sitting, which left Jack and David almost alone, another thing that happened a lot less often than Sarah suspected.

Strange, how David hadn't been able to get Sarah, and the things that she suspected off of his mind.

There was stuff that Sarah didn't suspect too, like the way David felt when Jack slung his arm around his shoulder as he ordered meals for both of them, since he'd already learned what David wanted. Those kinds of things were better to ignore. In fact, David told himself that he should be annoyed at Jack right now, for making assumptions instead of just letting him choose his own lunch.

"I should watch Les," David said, shrugging out of Jack's grasp. "Otherwise he's going to bet that change in his pocket on a game of marbles, and probably lose, knowing him."

"Might as well let him have a little fun, since he's the bread winner in the family."

"A little fun would be buying some penny candies. At least we know that wouldn't get out of hand." David rose to go find out what Les was doing, but Jack tugged him back down.

"This ain't about to neither. Quit worrying. It didn't bother you none last time he did it, or the time before, and it was fine then, so it'll be fine now."

"He's getting sick," David protested, only to receive Jack's patented David-you're-being-ridiculous look, wherein he leaned back in his chair, arms crossed behind his head like nothing David said was important at all.

Their meals came, and David sort of poked at his until he noticed Jack watching him.

"What?"

"You know," Jack said, "I didn't sign up to be best friends with Skittery."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"That you look like an idiot when you sulk."

"I'm not sulking."

"Uh-huh." Jack straightened his mouth, glared at his pork and beans, and stabbed the plate a few times, in what would have been a passable impersonation of a sulking David, if David had been sulking at all, which he _hadn't. _

The thing with Jack was that often he forgot about how quiet David was used to being. In all fairness, part of it was that David usually forgot about being quiet when Jack was around, but even if he didn't, there _had_ been a few lunches where they'd just sat together in comfortable, companionable silence, just not lately. _Lately_ Jack had been determined to make David entertain him at all costs.

At first David thought that he wasn't going to, and ate his food in determined quiet. Then after a minute Jack's gaze started to be too much, and David figured he could at least try to be engaging.

"Are you going to eat at our house tonight?" David asked.

"Got things to do. You can come if you want."

David shook his head.

"Sarah's been reading a lot lately."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

David took another bite of his meal, then a second and a third. He swallowed.

Jack looked bored, until all of a sudden he laughed and clapped David on the back.

"That's great Dave. Finish up your lunch."

And David couldn't say why Jack was suddenly so amused, but the way his hand traced up his neck was distracting enough that he forgot to ask.

::::::::::::

It was only much later, after all of their work was done for the day, that David started talking again about Sarah and her books.

"Sarah was trying to read to me a couple of nights ago," he said, earnestly this time, probably because to actually wanted to talk. That was good. Jack liked it best when he talked.

"What'd she want to read to you?"

"She got out all these books from when she was a kid," Les piped in. "It was _Little Women_ I think."

"Sounds… real exciting Davey," Jack said, just because he knew it would make David roll his eyes.

"Sarah's really smart," David said, as if he had a point to prove, like Jack was going to argue or something.

"Plenty smarter than I am," Jack said agreeably.

"And she has good taste in books. Usually."

"So she wasn't trying to read to you from _Little Women_?"

"Of course not," David said. He put his hands in his pockets. "It was one of the sequels."

Les made a sound of disgust, but for once Jack resisted the urge to react exactly the same way. David was a good brother, and he liked that about him, even if that was making things difficult lately.

"Did they get any bigger?" Jack asked.

"What?"

"The women. The first book's Little Women. So did they get bigger in the sequels?"

That made David smile, but that smile faded quickly into dead seriousness pretty quick, and David turned around to face him, "She said the part she was reading reminded her of you."

"Me?"

"It was something about a sailor. I don't know the book well, but he was getting ready to go out on a journey and Jo – she's the main character in the first book – started telling him about the ropes that the British navy uses on their ships. Every rope has a piece of red thread running through it, so that people can recognize it if it washes ashore."

"Right."

David put his hand on Jack's arm. "Right," he repeated. "The red thread is really important stuff, like soul, and conscience, and virtue all rolled into one. The point is that even if the ship is wrecked and everything else is destroyed, the ropes still have this red thread."

"And Sarah said that reminds her of me?"

David nodded, as serious as he'd ever looked.

"Look, like I said, I got things to do tonight," Jack said, turning away. "Guess you can walk yourself home alright?"

"I promised her I'd bring you home for dinner," David said. The thing was, David didn't make promises he didn't expect to be able to fulfill, which made this one weird. It wasn't like David could force him to do anything he didn't want to.

"I'm not virtuous," Jack pointed out.

"I know. But Sarah thinks you're a knight in shining armor or something."

"Yeah, well, I ain't one of those neither."

David looked absolutely frustrated, which definitely wasn't how Jack wanted things to go. Unspoken was the fact that Sarah thought Jack was_ in love_ with her.

"Why don't you come to dinner and tell her that?" David asked. Les made another gagging noise, and though David gave him an annoyed shake for his trouble, his eyes remained on Jack, challenging him. '

The worst part was, Jack knew he'd have to tell Sarah all that and more, eventually, and David would hate him for it. It wouldn't be right to marry the girl just to please her brother.

"I want to come," Jack said. "Just real busy, like I told you. Hey, you know what, I'll call all my other stuff off, and meet you there. Don't know about the armor, but I've missed Sarah a lot. 'Cause she's great."

Jack gave David his most beaming smile. Maybe he could make things work with Sarah. She deserved that much. Besides, even if Jack might have to deal with David hating him somewhere down the road, he could put it off for another night at any rate.

David just nodded, and Jack wondered why he didn't look more triumphant. He'd won, after all.


End file.
